


Little Wolf

by KaerWrites



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Abuse, Mentions of physical emotional and sexual abuse, Other, Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:24:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8275943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaerWrites/pseuds/KaerWrites
Summary: Does sacrifice lose something when its original purpose lies forgotten? With blood on his hands and guilt in his heart, he fled his master's side before he even understood what freedom meant. This is the story of Leto, and Fenris, and the long road to the City of Chains.Fenris backstory. Tags to be added as needed.





	1. Fenris

**Author's Note:**

> I've spoken about this fic on tumblr a few times, and gone back and forth with myself as to whether or not to proceed with it. This fic is about Fenris's backstory, so please bear that in mind before you read, and do not proceed if you think it's something that will bother you. This is meant as a way for me to further explore and understand his character, and is in no way meant to romanticize slavery and abuse.

Heat was beginning to permeate the morning air, burning off the last of the mist that yet clung, thin and greedy, to the river’s surface. The pleasure barge was well shaded with billowing silk canopies of black and gold and teal that bloated with each fishy breath of air and caused the play of light and shadows across the deck to skitter and dance.

Six elven children, each one a thing of beauty and none a year over twelve, stood with fans in two neat lines along either side of the place where the magisters sat to take their leisure. They glittered in gold jewelry and black silk tunics, their eyes glassy and blank with whatever spell had replaced their childhoods with utter subservience.

Standing at the ready two steps behind his master’s divan, the elf called Fenris felt sweat bead and roll slowly down his spine. It made him itch.

“I told them Gavien was too young for such a position!” when Magister Tulius slammed his fist onto the table, one of the serving girls jumped, and barely managed to swallow a gasp. Fortunately for her, the magister was too busy gesticulating with the stack of frontline reports in his other hand to notice. “ _This!_ This sort of foolishness is why those animals have yet to be put down. This level of losses is unacceptable at this stage!”

To his right, Magistrix Septima’s smile was reminiscent of a crocodile lying in wait. “Tell us how you _really_ feel, darling.”

Fenris yearned to move, to roll his shoulders, stretch his back. His new collar was too heavy, the weight of its excessive show of gemstones bearing it down until it cut into the sensitive flesh below. After a mere hour on his feet, his back and neck and shoulders were already aching, and there was an entire day yet to go.

Fenris stood motionless and alert and he did not allow his discomfort to distract him. He kept his gaze lowered far enough to avoid accidental eye contact with his betters, and carefully memorized every detail of the day, lest his master require assistance later.

Danarius lay reclined back on his divan, cool and at ease and yet incredibly calculating. He looked like the cat who had gotten into the cream, all self-satisfaction and purring arrogance. The young Gavien of the dire military blunders had been, up until a few weeks ago, a favored nephew of the Archon, certain of a future of power and prosperity. Handsome and popular at court, his parents had recently been considering a marriage contract with one of Septima’s own daughters.

It was _unfortunate_ then that he had been handed a military station in one of the front’s most troublesome areas. Aside from heavy fighting and nearly-indefensible grounds, there had also been the unlucky matter of a souring water supply and an unexpected food shortage. Half of his unit had already been lost, and of those that remained there was not a one who wasn’t suffering some sort of flux.

Suffice it to say young Gavien was no longer one of his uncle’s favorites.

“As I’m sure you’re well aware, the Archon has asked that I return to my estates in Seheron,” Danarius said. His smile was sure, superior, as he swirled the blood-colored wine in his goblet. He was pleased with the news of Gavien’s failure, though anyone who looked would be hard pressed to find evidence of his hand in it. The sudden crack of a whip seemed to punctuate his words, as one of the oarsmen earned a little extra motivation in the form of a bloody back. “To offer my wisdom to the dear, unfortunate lad in this trying time.”

“Yes,” Tulius said. “I had heard as much.”

The movement of the oars made waves that lapped gently against the sides of the pleasure barge. Fenris watched the faces of the serving girls who came to bring the next course of food. Unlike the children, who had simpler tasks, their wills hadn’t been stripped from them – at least not through magical means. They wore expressions carefully serene, soft on their beautiful faces, but for the one who had flinched earlier, whose control even now seemed more and more perilous, each time the foreman cracked open the skin of one of the men at the oars with his whip. He met her eyes without meaning to, saw the silent plea there, and moved his own gaze away.

“I have a protégé I would like to send with you, in fact,” Tulius said, the _tap tapping_ filling the hot morning air as he emptied his pipe and refilled it with fragrant leaves. This he did himself, often declaring a slave’s hands too dirty for such a task. “Should Gavien have need of…oh, a bit of a _holiday_ , to recover from the terrible luck that has befallen him, I am certain my boy will be more than happy to step up and offer his skills.”

“How very generous of you, my friend,” Danarius said, and shared a small smile with Septima.

Fenris let his gaze sweep the pleasure barge again, ignoring the way one of Septima’s bodyguards, an unusually tall elven man with a veritable halo of blond curls and a muscular chest oiled to perfection, tried to catch his eye. His shoulders ached, and the sweat that rolled beneath his collar irritated him, but this was the first official outing his master had taken him on, and he would not disappoint him.

He let the magisters’ chatter wash over him as he realized they had moved past the matter of the young fool Gavien and onto less political matters. He had not been instructed to listen in on idle gossip, and so he paid little attention to things like news of marriages and births, sales records from the slave pens, the record-setting sacrifice at last week’s imperial gala, and the latest scandal from the Pavus household. Instead he watched the horizon drifting past, and tried to smell something other than the river, and fought to ignore that one place on the small of his back that wouldn’t stop itching.

“ – truly a marvelous feat, Danarius.” Fenris brought his attention back as sharply as the crack of the foreman’s whip as he felt the magisters’ eyes turn upon him. He was careful not to move, not to rattle the decorative golden chain that led from his collar to his master’s chair, and he hoped, fervently, that he stood tall enough, shoulders squared and strong, expression set to the appropriate mixture of blank confidence Danarius preferred.

“There were some mutters that you wouldn’t be able to pull it off,” Septima said, voice honeyed and just this side of condescending. “We knew to expect better, didn’t we?”

“Certainly,” Tulius agreed. It took him a moment to rise, two of his bodyguards – burly humans, shaved completely hairless and painted up to resemble Qunari warriors – stepping forward obediently to offer their arms as he pulled his girth from his couch. “May I?”

Fenris did not miss the greedy press of his master’s lips, the flat displeasure in his eyes before he nodded.

Danarius did not like to share his toys.

Tulius lumbered forward, and Fenris did his best to remain still as a statue, to not attract more attention than he already had, to show how well trained and obedient he was, a perfect complement to his master. He was a testament to the man’s power, an accessory, a powerful pet. The tame wolf that fed only from his master’s hand.

He kept his eyes fixed somewhere past Tulius’s collar bone, and ignored the stink of the breaths the magister puffed in his face, the little grunts he made as he took his chin in hand, turned his face this way and that.

“Open,” the magister instructed, and inspected his teeth. He ran his hand over Fenris’s exposed belly, pinching, looking for fat that wasn’t there, then swatting it, hard enough that Fenris, unprepared, gave a small, unexpected grunt.

The searing pain that had stolen his sleep for weeks upon endless weeks had finally begun to settle, but the brands he had taken onto his skin were far from healed, and he had to clench his jaw, tears pricking his eyes, as the magister’s pudgy fingers began to trace them with a greedy, firm touch. A spark of magic, like a stinging electric shock, had them obediently lighting up for him.

“That’s lyrium!” Tulius exclaimed with surprise.

Danarius chuckled, but he did not sound pleased. “I had said as much, did I not?” he asked. “Did you think I simply had him painted to look like it?”

“I’m next,” Septima said, and sprung up from her seat. Her nails were filed to sharp points, and painted a poisonous green. Fenris inhaled quickly, but did his best to hide it, to remain still, as she ran her palms over his bicep and shoulder, then down his back. “Oh, and what a pretty thing you picked. Did you mark him everywhere?”

Danarius had risen, and Fenris was relieved to see amusement had replaced his earlier ire. He was happy his compatriots were so taken with, so fascinated by his pet. “See for yourself,” he invited as he approached.

The day was already warm, but the river breeze felt cold when his breechcloth was snatched away.

There was nothing sexual in the way they prodded and poked him, ran their fingers along his most sensitive areas, sparking magic to watch him light up. Like the judges at a dog show, they examined every inch of him, praising his form, his beauty, the art of his marks.

“Could you breed him?” Tulius asked, “Or do the marks make him a eunuch?”

“He _is_ very pretty,” Septima agreed.

“I’ve had a few offers,” Danarius smiled. “Perhaps, if the price is right, before I return to Seheron…”

Every inch of him was burning as they returned to their seats, calling for the next round of breakfast foods, the conversation turning to the excellent profit to be made in the breeding stables these days, and the best way to house the mothers before giving birth.

Fenris remained as he had stood all morning, skin now aflame, as the collar cut into his shoulders and sweat tickled his back, fishy river air sour in the back of his throat.

They had not given him back his breechcloth.


	2. Leto

In Minrathous, deep within the Imperium, the counting houses spread like sharp beaked buzzards down a single cramped row from the Square, towering, looming so high above that for the greater part of the day they blotted out the sun with their thick, hot shadows.

As a child, Leto had been terrified of these great, monstrous edifices of brick and glass, particularly the Grand Imperial Depository, in its place of honor at the end of the street, which housed, it was said, the fortunes of the Archon himself. With dozens of high, gleaming windows and stone dracolisks perched as if mid-takeoff, the building had always seemed a dark and menacing place.

Even now, though no longer a child, Leto was less than fond of it, though he did not bother to examine why. Whenever he left the building he studiously avoided looking to his left, where gaping draconic jaws waited on the verge of lunging for his tender young throat, so lifelike it would be easy to mistake a breeze for its breath.

He was not disturbed – by dragons or any other creature - as he made his way down the row. He knew his shoulder blades continued to prickle, as they always did, with the imagined feel of stone eyes tracking his retreat until he was well away from the building. His ears and the collar ‘round his neck marked him as utterly unremarkable. He was naught but property whose services had been rented out by a business-savvy mistress who understood the worth of a slave with a brain. In exchange for his services at the counting houses his Domina received a tidy sum and, more importantly, he received invaluable training that would increase his worth substantially with each passing year. Even the costly contents of his scribe’s satchel – expensive inks and fine papers – wouldn’t be worth the wrath of those who held his figurative leash.

It was a twisted sort of protection, but a protection nonetheless – and one Varania seemed utterly unaware of.

Leto frowned when he entered the Square and spotted his elder sister near the large central fountain. With her shoulders hunched and her hands restless on the fabric of her skirts, she broadcast her nerves as clearly as if she stood there screaming.

Varania did not leave the villa often. She had been lucky enough to be born with an affinity for magic, but unlucky enough that it came weak. “Not even worth training,” her testers had said when she was twelve, before relegating her to their master’s kitchens. Now seventeen, she was very nearly too old to have any hope of being assigned a better position, though the kitchens were a far cry better than their master’s fields in Seheron.

She didn’t see him approach, and she jerked like a nervous rabbit and half pulled the note of passage she’d been given out of her pocket every time she thought she was about to be approached. It had not occurred to her that slaves who minded their business and looked as if they knew what they were doing were unlikely to be challenged.

“Varania,” Leto said, and grinned as she almost sent herself spilling into the fountain at the unexpected sound of his voice from behind her. “What are you doing?”

“Leto!” Varania, ever aware of their position, looked quickly to ensure they had attracted no attention, and only hissed his name. Were they at the villa, he would have earned a swat for surprising her. “Domina sent me to wait for you,” she said. “She requires a letter penned and delivered before – “

“Before tonight,” he finished for her, with a feeling of unease. That their mistress had a secret lover was to be expected, really. No one in the magisterium was truly shocked by such matters. But the wounded party was rarely understanding when it came to the unfortunate slave who helped facilitate such _clandestine_ meetings. Their master’s announcement of a sudden, unexpected return to the city was concerning.

Leto had never met the man, and only rarely caught sight of him from afar, for he seldom visited Minrathous, or the wife and two mostly grown children who resided there.

It was said that his master, Danarius, was a brilliant man. A magister who had gained fame and renown for the unmatched success with which he studied and discovered magics thought long since lost. His prolonged absences from court did not diminish the influence he held, and on the rare occasion when he did return to the capital, his presence was in high demand. It was unlikely even a slave of Leto’s talent and intelligence would ever have cause to warrant his attention.

Unless he learned about Domina’s letters.

Ignoring an uneasy thrill down his spine, Leto quickened his pace. Varania nearly tripped, trying to keep up.

Leto had always liked the Square. Architecture in the imperium tended toward the close and the dark, the towering and intimidating, but here there were lovely little parks and clear, trickling fountains, meant, of course, not for the idle amusement of slaves, but for the pleasure of the Imperium’s finest citizens. Still, after a day in the dreary counting houses, Leto could almost appreciate their beauty. Almost.

Left of the fountain, he knew too well the cobbled road that would take one down to the docks, where the air was heavy with the stench of sweat and fish and the dockmaster’s cries were carried away on the wind. It was closer than anyone liked to pretend. There in dingy warehouses goods would be auctioned off to businesses, merchants, and professional procurers, the latter of whom would take their purchases to sell to the magisters in considerably more pleasant surroundings. Leto had been born into the house he served, but as part of his training he had, on occasion, been required to attend such things with Domina’s favored procurer to keep records. Though his companions had been impassive of it all, he had suffered nightmares for weeks, reliving the clink of chains and the smell of sweat, the way humans and elves and Qunari were lined up for inspection just the same way that the cows and the pigs and the horses were. A quiet kind of horror had settled within him and never really left.

In a way, the dark dirty warehouses were better by far than the High Auction where the Magisters made direct purchases. Leto had attended these events as well, after he had impressed Domina with his accuracy and trustworthiness. More, as she said, he had a pretty face, and made an acceptable accessory. Dolled up and following her entourage into a grand building that might as well have been a theatre or opera house, he had stood silently and taken diligent notes as ordered. First came the Grand Show, the audience sitting and snacking on delicacies as slaves were trotted out for them, nude and gleaming with oil and baubles to show off their beauty or their strength. Many were enchanted or drugged into mindless docility, smiling dreamily as they were asked to bend and turn this way and that to show off the best advantage of their forms. Domina indicated those she wanted a better look at, and Leto wrote their numbers down, so that she could inspect them in closer detail later.

Domina insisted on beauty for those slaves who served within her household. She took great pride in her ability to select the most winsome specimens, and was greatly admired within her circle of friends for her taste. When a slave’s looks fell out of her favor, it did not take long for the offending party to disappear – sold, or, often, gifted to a friend.

Leto and Varania bypassed Dockstreet, cutting through the Square and taking the second right, down the street that would eventually lead to the villa where Leto had been born and raised.

His mother, now a handmaiden for Domina, had been a careless wedding gift. A pretty enough slave, she had been used in the breeding pens and given birth to so many mages that the new assignment had been considered a reward – as had being permitted to keep the two children who had come after. Of whatever other siblings Leto might have, he had never met them, and the same held true for whatever elf had sired him. He and Varania had grown up relatively lucky, as far as a slave’s luck went. He had sunlit memories of playing in the courtyard with Varania while mother saw to Domina’s hair and nails. Leto’s mother had always been strict, even harsh at times, fearful that a slipup could have her two remaining children sent away. Still, it wasn’t until visiting the dockside markets that Leto began to understand the horror of what it meant to be property.

They found the villa quiet when they returned, slipping through the atrium with steps kept silent from long practice, past the door guards and into the central courtyard. Leto made his way quickly to the quarters he shared with his family, a small room near the front of the villa consisting of little more than a low table and three cubbies for sleeping in. Because of their mother’s favored position, they had more privacy than much of the rest of the household staff.

Leto took only enough time to splash his face with water and put away his scribe’s satchel – Domina would have her own materials for him to use: perfumed paper and decadent inks. It was more than the mere matter of making her wait – the longer he took, the greater the chance of being caught with the secret correspondence when his master made his return that evening.

Leto’s heart was in his throat as he hurried from the room. He took care to move quickly without having the appearance of someone in a hurry. Poise and beauty were treasured by Domina, whose little kingdom existed only on the whim of her pleasure.

When he reached Domina’s chambers, he found Danarius already within.

Leto stopped short just inside the entrance to his mistress’s rooms, and his heart seemed suddenly so loud that he was concerned it would alert the man to his arrival. It was strange, after a life of seeing the man who held ownership over Leto and his family only at a distance, and only in passing, to suddenly and unexpectedly find himself close enough to see the travel wrinkles that marred the man’s robes. He could smell his master’s expensive cologne as it mingled with the stench of incense and blood that seemed to follow all of the more powerful magisters. Danarius’s presence completely overshadowed that of his wife, who stood red-faced and furious in her silk dressing gown, unable to do anything but watch helplessly as her husband picked through the correspondence on her writing desk.

“ – my private quarters!” she said, in the same sort of voice she might use on a clumsy kitchen boy moments before sending him for a lashing. Leto knew his master would not find anything of note in the writing desk. Domina was more clever than to leave incriminating documents in so obvious a location. Her protest was made out of principle, not fear.

The twist of amusement that touched Danarius’s lips told Leto that his master knew the same. The magister turned and rested his backside against the scrolled edge of the writing desk as he read. As he crossed his legs at the ankle, Leto caught the flash of a scuffed riding boot. Danarius had only just arrived, then, and made tormenting his wife his first priority.

“You, boy,” the magister addressed him without having once glanced his way. “What service did your domina summon you for?”

“My sister’s child is ill,” Domina’s answer was stiff, color growing even darker in her cheeks as she lifted her chin. Leto chanced a glance at her eyes – flashing and furious – before he dropped his gaze properly to the floor. “I’m planning to visit her in the spring, if you think it is any of your concern.”

Leto heard his master chuckle. He heard the shuffling of pages. He remained where he stood, just inside the door, unable to leave without being dismissed.

“Clearly I haven’t been giving you enough credit, my dear,” Danarius said. “I never imagined you had a heart. And such a charitable one at that! Forty thousand gold to your hairdresser last year? Eighty to your dressmaker? My, we’re keeping the entire city fed, aren’t we?”

“Fortunately,” Domina said, “The finances are my concern. Not yours.”

“What an amusing way you have of seeing things.”

“Danarius!”

“Try stomping your foot. Perhaps that will make me listen to you.”

Leto stayed frozen, wishing, uselessly, to be somewhere, _anywhere_ else. Domina didn’t answer the suggestion, and silence fell within the room. Leto heard more papers being shuffled. They could leave him standing here all night, if they liked. Leto fought the urge to wriggle his toes in Domina’s plush pink carpets.

“My word but you’re wasteful,” Danarius said. “You have three times the number of slaves a villa of this size should maintain.”

“Attina – “

“Attina. Yes, I’m sure your friends have plenty of opinions on the size of the household staff. Do you actually know your letters, or are you merely here to accessorize my wife’s summer wardrobe?”

It took Leto a beat too long to realize the question had been directed at him. Danarius didn’t stop reading, didn’t so much as glance his way. He lifted a hand, and with all the casual inattention of swatting a fly, a twitch of his wrist sent Leto flying.

He hit the wall in the hallway with enough force to steal his breath. Above the ringing in his ears, he heard Domina scold her husband, more annoyed than concerned, “ _Really, you brute, you know these elves are like children_.”

Then the pain began.


	3. Leto

Healing, though not an uncommon practice in a city run by mages, was nevertheless not an expense generally wasted on slaves – certainly not slaves recovering from punishment. Healing, in the rare case it was given, was a reward. It was a prize, and it was given only to the most deserving, the most exceptional, the most favored of slaves. Gladiators who pleased the arena with their bloody talent might find the night’s lethal wounds magically closed. Pleasure slaves who serviced a successful party might be indulged in a soothing cure for their various private aches. Bodyguards who proved loyal and talented and clever might hope, when they took a blow for their master, that said master might decide a quick spell was more convenient than training a replacement.

So, Leto was given no healing, and nor did he expect any. Though his master’s spell left no visible marks, it did have the charming effect of a lingering pain and feverish weakness, and for two days the young scribe was unable to rise from his narrow straw cot. Whenever they could manage it, his mother and sister would dart from their work to check on him, and his sister, when she was caught, was very nearly beaten in turn.

Leto was still weak and shaky on the third day, when he received a summons to his master’s side. It was a warm day, the sky clear and blue, as was common for a Tevinter summer, and his mother, upon receiving the news that her son was wanted, gave him an imploring look.

“None of your tests,” she wanted him. “No cheeky looks, no clever insults, no tiny slights. Dominus is not like the masters you are accustomed to. I have no wish to lose my son. Promise me, Leto.”

He didn’t like it, but he promised. Leto dressed himself with care, and he downed some of the strong, bitter coffee the slaves were allowed, and he gathered up every stubborn scrap of willpower he possessed to walk through the halls without a limp. He would heed his mother’s advice if he must, but damned if he would show Danarius his pain.

The magister was still being dressed for the day. His bedchamber was all gold and marble and rich red curtains, and he stood on a rug in the center of the room with his arms extended as slave boys, each more lovely than the last, darted back and forth. They draped his robes around his shoulders and they shined his shoes, they held up different accessories, checking them against his attire and waiting for approval. A pair of slender youths struggled to hold up a large gilt mirror before him so that he could examine himself from top to toe. His hair had been slicked, and his beard oiled to a fine point.

Leto didn’t immediately drop his eyes, the way he would have been expected to. He took a fraction of a moment longer than he had been trained to before he fixed his gaze to the floor.

“On your knees,” the magister said, and for a moment Leto’s limbs fought him, rebellious.

The marble was hard and cold against his knees.

“Teaching a slave of your rank to read,” Danarius said, his voice cool and humorless and disgusted. “What a terrible waste. It is an unfortunate practice that all too often instills in its victim a harmful sense of self-worth. It should be outlawed.”

He paused. Leto could feel his eyes, that slow, searching gaze of a man looking over his property. He struggled with himself to keep his head bowed. His master had eyes like hard cold marble, grey and merciless and unforgiving.

“Yes, dominus,” Leto said, for it seemed he was supposed to offer something, and Danarius gave a chuckle that sent his skin crawling.

A slave boy knelt to latch a belt around his master’s waist, and Danarius brushed the lad’s hair back with long, spidery fingers. He said, “My wife has a needlessly soft touch with it comes to animals like you. Myself, I cannot abide a spoiled slave.”

“Yes, dominus,” Leto answered again. He watched that pale soft hand stroke the boy’s head like a dog.

Danarius said, “You understand, I hope, that were it not for my wife’s insistence on your talent and value, I would have seen you stripped of your skin and left to dance in your bones three days ago?”

Leto felt a chill, but his voice was strong when he answered, again, “Yes, dominus.”

“You may yet meet such a fate, should you fail to exceed every expectation my wife has made in regard to that mind of yours.” This time, Danarius did not wait for a response. He said, “Your materials are on the desk.”

Leto should have waited for permission to rise. As it was, he barely remembered to lean forward, to press his forehead to the marble in a kneeling bow before he was up, moving to fetch the items – a scribe’s satchel brimming with paper and ink.

Fortunately for him, the magister had moved on to other matters, and did not notice.

Elius, the master of slaves, was waiting for them out in the yard. The aged elf was kneeling on the dusty drive in his fine linen breeches, and he was sweating heavily beneath his broad leather collar. He kissed Danarius’s shoes, and puffed a little as he regained his feet.

“Dominus,” he said, “You have been sorely missed. The sun does not shine without your illustrious presence, and the moon hides her face in shame. The stars themselves weep for your absence.”

“Just get on with it,” Danarius said.

It didn’t take long for Leto to discern their purpose. Danarius was looking to trim his wife’s stable of slaves, which had grown to nearly three hundred in his absence. Elius led them from place to place to place within the villa, and wherever they stopped the slaves were made to line up for inspection. Unlike Leto, Elius could not read or write, but he had a sharp memory and he knew every soul owned by the household. Without need of notes he could recite any detail Danarius wished to know about any slave – age, health, temperament, special skills, estimated value at auction. Whenever the magister indicated interest in one particular slave or another, it was Leto’s job to diligently copy their name, as well as the recommendation of where to sell them.

“Good for field work, dominus,” Elius would say, or, “Excellent weaver, eyesight still strong. I could inquire about an offer…”

The slaves of the villa were a community, first and foremost, and Leto, bright and charismatic as he was, was well known, even liked, among his fellows, and he knew many of the other slaves very well. Though it was no strange occurrence for someone to be given away on Domina’s whim, or even sold privately when a particular offer came up, Leto found himself feeling increasingly ill with each name he added to his list. These slaves were friends, neighbors, faces he saw every day, and they were being condemned to public auction.

Leto couldn’t quite stop himself from picturing the Dockstreet markets – the clink of chains, the gleam of the platform, the wood worn soft by too many pairs of bare feet. He pictured the slaves, stripped down and put on display, haggled over like raw meat, poked and prodded and shouted at. He had known some of these people his entire life.

His hands began to tremble.

“Virginal, still, as the healers promised last month,” Elius declared, and let the young scullery maid slip down from the work table. Red faced and gripping her skirts, she scurried back into the line. “A perfect candidate for a special occasion sacrifice. She should easily fetch – “

“No, not her,” Danarius said, almost bored with the entire process. He motioned to one of his guards with a careless gesture, and they pulled her from the line. “I have my own sacrifices to make. She will have her use here.”

“As you wish, dominus,” Elius bowed. Leto watched the girl realize, too late, what they meant. She began to struggle, but the guards held her firmly. Leto supposed, after learning there was a sacrificial altar in one’s future, there was nothing left to lose.

“See her secured,” Danarius told the guards. “I will know if she is touched.”

“Yes, dominus.”

“Yes, dominus.”

“Next,” Elius said, as they took her, wailing, away, and drew the next girl from the line. She did not lift her eyes, and did not wait to be told to loosen her blouse. Her breasts fell forward, young and full. They did not order her onto the table. “This one’s virtue is spoiled, I’m afraid, dominus, but she still has potential for a fair price at market. Seventeen, healthy, and in possession of fair looks and a small measure of magical talent, but little other notable skills. Fertile line. Recommended for the breeding pens. Estimated to fetch seventy to eighty outright, or to rent out for a baseline of forty a year.”

Danarius nodded, and motioned to Leto, then nodded for the next girl to come forward.

As she hurried to step back into line, fixing herself once more in her blouse, Leto slowly wrote down his sister’s name.

\--

When Leto burst into his family’s quarters that evening, he knew Varania had already told their mother everything. He paused to take them in, and the knowledge was there, like a solid presence, an unwanted visitor to their little home.

He could see its weight in their mother’s shoulders, in the slow and methodic way she sliced onions for their dinner. He saw it in the resigned, passionless way Varania gazed at the blood which swelled on her finger when, mending a skirt, she pricked herself.

“We have to escape,” Leto declared, and his voice breaking the silence was like a glass shattering, the way it startled them out of the private torture of their thoughts. His mother was the first to move, slamming down her knife and rushing to the door, ripping it open to check outside for listeners.

“Don’t say such things!” she hissed, and she closed the door firmly. Her face was white.

“I’ll say what I like,” Leto insisted, but he lowered his voice. “We have to get out of here. Tonight.”

“Getting us all killed is better than being sold off?” Varania asked. Her voice was sharp, humorless. The firelight playing off her face cast her in skeletal shadows. “Dominus will nail your ears to the ground and have you flogged in the public square.”

“No,” Leto said, “We won’t get caught. I won’t let us. There are ways – systems. I’ve heard - !”

“Those rumors are planted by the magisters to trap the disloyal,” Varania snapped.

“They can’t all be!” Leto insisted, and knew he sounded desperate because he _was_ desperate. His heart pounded in his chest, reckless, afraid. “Listen!” he insisted. “I can find them! I know I can! We can - !”

“Leto, stop!” his mother threw her arms around him, and she gripped him, hard. He realized he was shaking, and his eyes were burning with tears. As he lifted his arms to close them, slowly, around his mother’s slight form, he could feel the violence with which she, too, trembled.

“I have to _do_ something,” he said, and even to his own ears his voice sounded very small, and very, very lost.


	4. Leto

They passed a restless night, the small family gathered close and silent and sad. Leto’s dinner tasted like ash. He wanted to pace, to plan, to slip through the door and out into the streets, where, if he was very clever and very, very lucky, he might manage to convince someone to take his sister to freedom. Leto reasoned he could _very_ persuasive, for a matter like this. He had a little coin stashed away, and if coin wouldn’t do the trick…

But his mother jumped at every sound, and her lips trembled with looming tears, and she looked at her children as if convinced the moment she blinked she would lose them both forever. Her hands shook as they went about her evening chores. She seemed to believe that the guards would come at any moment, that they would drag Varania to the auction block that very night, or, perhaps, take Leto, for daring to even _think_ about escape.

Leto wondered if it would help to tell her that, if Danarius’s blood magic gave him the ability to read minds, as so many of his slaves believed, Leto would never have survived the afternoon with him.

The soft sounds of her sobbing kept him awake for most of the night, and the next morning, Leto was once again summoned to his master’s side.

The scene was much the same as the day before. The sun poured through the windows at the same bright golden angles as slave boys darted around, dressing their Dominus.

“ – a spectacle of it,” Danarius was saying, as Leto entered the room and knelt without prompting where he had the day before, near the door. Today Leto kept his head down, and he did not risk a glance. Whatever chance he would find to save his sister, it would not come if his master sensed his intentions – and he knew there would be no hiding his hatred. “A great triumph of valor and sportsmanship, just in time for the Archon’s birthday.” Danarius chuckled at that, at the political maneuvering of whatever it was he spoke of. A howl punctuated his merriment – a slave had spilled a vial of cologne, and its heavy, rich scent mingled cloyingly with the familiar odor of sweat and fear and blood as they whipped the unfortunate lad near the window. They had him tied spread-eagle at the casement, the bright purple silk bindings a luxurious insult against his naked skin, and he was faced out toward the bright new day that rose over Minrathous. His back was already an agony of red welts. Leto realized he knew the boy. He had worked in the kitchens with Varania, before Danarius had claimed him for his own use. He wouldn’t have known how to properly serve here – the art of dressing, of pampering and pleasing.

Leto kept his eyes lowered.

“An excellent plan, dominus – the Archon will be pleased, I am sure.” It was the magister’s steward who answered him, a tall thin human with pointed shoulders and a wisp of a mustache. His smile was ingratiating, fawning. “And what of the slaves you chose yesterday?”

“The list is on the desk – take it to my man on Dockstreet, and tell him to get started with all haste.”

Leto watched the steward’s feet cross the marble floor. He let his gaze rise only enough to see as the man lifted the list, printed carefully in Leto’s own hand. Varania’s name seemed to stand out among the rest – a bold and unflinching reality, proof that yesterday had truly happened, and not been some imagined fever dream as a part of Leto had hoped.

The steward’s surprise was clear. “So many, dominus?” he asked.

“I want them gone by the end of the month,” Danarius said. “See that the proceeds go toward the lyrium shipment I have on order.”

“For this many it will be…a great deal of money, dominus.”

“I require a great deal of lyrium,” Danarius answered with a chuckle. He sounded pleased this morning. Leto’s stomach curdled with hate as he heard the whip crash again. The guard doing the punishment murmured something low and mocking, and the boy only sobbed. If it was meant for their master’s amusement, then the effort was wasted. Danarius ignored them as he might the buzzing of a fly.

The steward bowed low. “I will see it done to your every desire, dominus,” he swore. Danarius turned his attention back to his dressing, and ignored him. He did not address Leto. Perhaps yesterday had been enough to persuade him of his value.

They went out to the household’s private Ludus – the training school for the guards and gladiators who served Danarius and his wife. The grounds had been expanded on recently. It was a gleaming, over-decorated blight on an otherwise stately district of the city, marred by too many ugly statues of warriors with anatomically incorrect musculature. Last spring Domina and her friends had gone mad for gladiators and poured a fortune into reviving the previously tasteful grounds the buying up every likely fighter to hit the markets. It lasted all of a season before she lost interest and moved on to the next fancy.

Leto felt cold as they approached. He was very familiar with the slaves here, as even after Domina’s interest waned he was yet often called upon to document their training and the results of their medical exams – and when he was not needed elsewhere he sometimes came here of his own will, to watch, to help, even to participate. Leto had a small build, even for an elf, and little head for violence, but he was a strong runner, and he enjoyed the little games and sports the other boys came up with to test themselves. It was the only sort of happiness he found in his life. It reminded him, somewhat, of his childhood – of playing in the gardens with his sister, before they were considered old enough to be of use.

Danarius had the gladiators gathered together in the yard, and Leto recited their names to himself as they took their places. Cnaeus, the burly human with the strength of three men. Fabia, whose expertise was a trident and net. Gallus was the sole elf among their number, tall and smiling, with a halo of blond curls. Durit, who had Qunari blood. Sen. Horate. Iunia. Laelius. More.

Unlike household slaves, these were fighters. They stood at attention, and they did not lower their eyes. Leto had always envied their ability to hold onto something like pride, to grin and hold their heads high even as they were put on display, their nude bodies slick and gleaming with oil.

Leto expected Danarius to walk down the line, to take examination of each, to have him make a list, as he had the day before.

Instead, the magister addressed the fighters directly.

He said, “At the end of the month, in honor of the Archon’s birthday, I will be hosting a special set of Games.” His smile was cold, calculating, a crocodile who saw a rich meal upon the bank. “The winner of these Games will receive the great honor of becoming my personal guard, and will be gifted a prize of their choosing.”

This earned grins, an excited murmur. Fighters exchanged glances, slapped each other’s’ chests, laughed. Cnaeus rolled his shoulders in anticipation, and made his chest muscles dance.

Danarius turned away, and began to walk from the arena.

“Stay,” he ordered, when Leto made to follow. “Watch their training, record their progress.”

Leto ducked his head. He said, only, “Yes, dominus.”

\--

Leto had watched the fighters long enough in the yard to know their exercises, their strengths, their weaknesses. It took him less than an hour to draft up a false report of the day’s activities, and then he was up on his feet and grabbing a spear from the shelves.

Gallus laughed at him, and when Leto approached him to spar, the other elf had him on the ground almost as soon as the match began.

“You are less helpful than you think here, my friend,” Gallus said, as he helped him back to his feet. “Go back to your letters. If I had an excuse to spend the afternoon sitting on my ass in the shade, believe fully that I would take it with gratitude.”

“I’m not trying to help you,” Leto said. “I’m trying to beat you.”

Gallus laughed again. He watched Leto attempt to mimic his fighting stance, and used his spear to quickly and easily sweep his feet out from under him.

“You might as well say you are trying to sprout wings,” he said, jovial, smiling, as Leto coughed and groaned and, slowly, picked himself up once again.

Leto spat sand from his mouth and he said, “Show me the correct grip, the appropriate stance.”

“To what end?” Gallus asked.

“Do you think you’ll compete?” Cnaeus asked, approaching. “Dominus would never allow it.”

Leto lifted his chin. He said, “When I win the prize, Dominus will _have_ to allow it.”

His friends exchanged glances. Gallus did not often lose his smile, but Leto watched him turn serious now. He said, “If you are caught, you will be punished.”

“I’ve been punished before. I’m not afraid of pain.”

Gallus was not impressed. He said, “And if you do succeed – if you make it to the Games? You will die.”

“I won’t die,” Leto said. He felt his grin stretch his face. It was the kind of expression that never failed to make his sister pale. He hefted the spear, and once again attempted the appropriate stance. They were gathering attention now from the other fighters. Fabia catcalled him, suggested more pleasant forms of exercise that involved having his face pressed into the dirt. She stuck her spear between her legs for emphasis, and the others roared with laughter.

Cnaeus lowered his voice. He said, “What is this about? The prize?”

“That’s exactly what it’s about,” Leto said. It burned in his mind, the fire of his mad idea. He could hear the magister’s voice ringing in his mind as he spoke of his Games. He wanted to wrap himself around those words, savor them like a candy. His entire body hummed with excitement and energy. “Now help me, or leave me alone.”

Once again, Cnaeus and Gallus exchanged glances. Something passed, unsaid, between them.

Gallus swept out his spear, and for yet a third time that afternoon, Leto found himself intimately acquainted with the ground.

He was grinning, elated, as he found his feet.


	5. Fenris

At intermission, the magisters gathered to mingle, to sip champagne and nibble sweets as they importantly levied their critiques of the first half of the night’s performance.

Like a muster of peacocks they descended from their private boxes, each of them meticulously dressed with the intent of outdoing the next. Silk gowns and satin coats vied for attention with leather straps and ropes of pearls. Towering caps with points sharp enough to pierce flesh paired with capes starched too stiffly for movement and warred outrageously with dramatically curving shoulder pads and heels so high that each step required the assistance of a slew of slaves, each of whom were fashion statements unto themselves. The miasmic cloud of expensive perfume, scented oil, and heavy incense that filled the gallery never quite succeeded in covering up the reek of fresh blood from the stage.

Amid this circus of excess, Danarius managed the near-impossible feat of standing out. Severe in robes of black and grey, his beard oiled to a sharp point, his only extravagance came in the flash of gold from the delicate filigree leash he held carelessly in one gloved hand. Eye catching though his simple attire proved, it would have been considered laughable were it not for the true jewel in his crown – the slave who stood at the ready, three steps behind and to his right.

Domina was displeased with the spectacle – with the time and the money and the attention that had been poured into her husband’s pet. “Obscene,” she had called him, and looked at Fenris with a hate he did not understand. He knew the cost of the lyrium alone had been astronomical. The expense only grew from there – a year’s worth of recovery and training, the healers, the specialists, the experts in fighting technique, in etiquette, in style and society and food and wine and survival skills. Fenris had awoken a blank slate, and they had forged him into any and everything his master could ever need.

Even now, amidst all of the hungry, curious, covetous glances from his master’s peers, Fenris could feel Domina watching him from across the room, her spite a real and poisonous thing.

It was common practice for magisters to dress their slaves to complement their own attire; for the elf called Fenris, the resemblance ended with the color scheme.

For his first public event at his master’s side, Fenris was mostly nude. He wore his heaviest gold collar around his neck, and jeweled dueling knives strapped to his thighs. His hair had been slicked back away from his face and tied up atop his head, and his skin had been oiled to gleaming. Nearly every sinuous line of lyrium that traced his body was left exposed, continuously lit by a small stream of magic his master sent down the line of the leash.

“At this stage, the pain will be immense for you,” Danarius had told him earlier that evening, as he personally fastened the collar ‘round his pet’s throat. “You will not show it. You will make neither sound nor movement without my bidding. Because you love me, you will endure.”

Though Danarius spoke with pride, there was no warmth or affection to his words. Fenris did not expect them. He had done nothing to earn them. He kept his eyes lowered, and in response he murmured only a soft, “Yes, dominus.”

“No,” Danarius said. “I think you can do better. Say it – because you love me, you will endure.”

“Because I love you,” Fenris said, “I will endure.”

“There’s my little wolf.”

Fenris warmed under the praise, the small and encouraging endearment, and he gratefully accepted the little treat pressed between his lips in reward. The sliver of salted raw fish was fatty between his teeth as he chewed. It was good to please his master – he did not question that. His devotion to the one who had made him filled every memory. It had been woven into every aspect of his training. He did not doubt that he should love his master with every fiber of his being – that every breath and every step and every beat of his heart should take place only in service to his master.

Danarius was his world. Danarius was his god.

Fenris felt his skin burning as if aflame – as if at any moment it should bubble, blacken, blister. Each new pulse of magic Danarius sent down his chain was a fresh source of agony – but here, under the eyes of his master’s colleagues and friends, he had no choice but to bear it stoically. His belly trembled, boiled with guilt over the fact that he should find the task so difficult. Though thus far he had behaved exactly as ordered, it felt like a failure that he should yearn so much for the relief that would come when the show resumed and the need for darkness necessitated his glow be stilled. He should have been filled with pride that his master had chosen him to serve in such a way. His love for his master should have overcome all his hurts. His weakness shamed him, on a night when he should have been filled with pride.

“If you ask me, the entire string section is due a good flaying,” Danarius was saying to those gathered around him. He was enjoying the attention, drawing it out by skillfully avoiding the inevitable questions about his new accessory. Most of the other magisters had not seen Fenris yet. Danarius smiled like a crocodile and sipped his wine.

Fenris fought to focus on his service, rather than his pain. He listened with half an ear to the conversation to be sure that he did not miss something that he would be asked to recite later. Another wave of magic crashed carelessly through him, and the pain turned his stomach. Fenris gritted his teeth and let his gaze sweep the room, taking in the little clusters of magisters who plotted and gossiped and whispered in their tight little knots. He looked for threats, and he looked for things his master would care to know later – signs of alliances, of favors and feuds.

He nearly missed it – the smile directed his way, not by a magister, but by a fellow slave, who risked humiliating his mistress further when he lifted a hand to wave. It was a quick and discreet movement, but nonetheless unmistakable.

Fenris recognized him as one of Septima’s bodyguards – an elf like him, though broader and more muscular. He was dressed in a mockery of gladiatorial garb, more flash than function, and a pair of horns rested in the golden halo of his hair, to mimic a Qunari.

The brash fellow’s smile only grew when he realized he had succeeded in catching Fenris’s attention, and he began to mouth something at him – words Fenris didn’t bother trying to catch. He quickly looked away, intent on ignoring the fool.

The timing was fortunate, as fate would quickly prove. As Fenris turned his head he caught the flash, the silvery gleam of a blade. A human woman in the livery of the opera house drew a dagger, and lunged toward Danarius.

Fenris moved. He did not hesitate, did not think.

The woman was on Danarius’s other side, two steps further than his leash allowed. The sound of it snapping seemed deafening as the elf moved to intercept her.

There was a still, eternal moment that passed when their eyes met. Her heart beat, quick and strong, against his palm. Her eyes were full of terror. She was following orders. She had not asked for this.

He pulled her heart from her chest.

Fenris stared at it as she crumpled, watched it beating in his palm. A sudden sound of applause brought him back to reality.

Fenris turned and knelt. He put the heart on the ground at his master’s feet. The gallery was now full of excited chatter. Every eye was on them.

Danarius still looked startled. Then he smiled, and his hand reached out. Fingers brushed his hair. He said, “Good boy.”


	6. Fenris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter has a rape scene. Please skip this chapter if you need to. Please take care of yourself.
> 
> I debated a long time about whether to write this scene but the story and the characters demanded it. I still believe you can skip this chapter and not lose anything from the plot, so, again, please don't feel like you have to read it if you're uncomfortable or upset in any way. Your health and happiness is much more important than my need to dig into these characters.

“ – a circus!” Domina’s voice was raised, and the elf called Fenris could hear it even before he entered his master’s chambers. Domina’s slaves had already helped her into her dressing gown, but she still wore her makeup and jewelry from their evening out, and she glittered like a thousand stars with every gesture. Danarius had dispensed with his own personal slaves some weeks ago, turning their duties over to Fenris, and as the elf hurried across the bedchamber to help him undress he couldn’t help but to note the frustrated violence with which Domina ripped the pins from her towering wig. “You made us a spectacle!” she said. “Is that how you plan to pay off all that lyrium, Danarius? By selling us into show business?”

Danarius did not act as if he could hear her. He lifted his chin so that Fenris could get to the buttons of his high collar, his eyes like pale glass. He merely leaned to the side to avoid it when Domina’s wig went flying, and he did not turn his head to watch its progress as it crashed into the wall. He spread his arms, and Fenris stripped his evening jacket from his shoulders.

“ _Answer me!_ ” Domina shrieked. Danarius brushed Fenris’s fingers away from his belt, and crossed the room to her. Her eyes flared in fury as he caught her pointed chin in his hand.

Even in her rage, Domina was a beautiful woman. Her anger brought a bloom of color like roses against her soft cheeks, and her eyes were wide and wet. They were a study of contrasts, she and Danarius. He was all sharp angles to her soft curves, icy calm to her fiery passion, age to her youth. She had scarcely been sixteen when they wed, and Danarius already in his thirties.

“Viper,” Danarius called her, his voice soft, smiling, gentle, and no warmer than it was for anyone else. There was an unspoken danger to him, to the way he watched, calculating. Domina never seemed able to see it through her hatred. “If you wanted to avoid attracting attention, you should have hired better assassins.”

“If I had hired assassins,” she said, “You would be dead.”

Danarius chuckled. He bent his head to kiss her, and she wrenched away. He dropped his hands to the sash tying her dressing gown closed and she lashed out, struggled. Fenris bowed his head, knowing better than to intervene. Domina’s hand came up. Her nails raked across Danarius’s face, and he finally stepped back. She fled his quarters.

For a long time after she left, the room was silent. Domina’s slaves stilled where they stood, frozen like statues with eyes fixed firmly on the ground. They had not been dismissed, and they were terrified of attracting attention. Their unease was like a living, breathing thing, something cold blooded and scaled, breathing hot breath against their soft vulnerable necks. Fenris watched his master through his reflection in one of his large gilt mirrors. A trio of marks, red and angry, marred his face. Blood dripped into his beard. He touched it gingerly, curiously, pressed his bloodied fingertips to his lips.

It was not rare for Danarius to summon his wife to his chambers at least once a week whenever they were in the same city. Although the matter of heirs had been taken care of some years ago, Danarius took some mysterious pleasure in his wife’s utter disdain for him, in exerting his power over her.

She had never fled before performing her duties before.

Danarius could be mercurial at time, though the shifts in his mood and amusements were often difficult to anticipate or detect. He was not the kind of man to delight in causing pain simply for pain’s sake, but there was little mercy to be found in him when he decided a punishment was warranted. The force that drove Danarius was not hedonism or cruelty or aesthetic delights. It was, simply, power. It’s acquisition. It’s use. Everything else was viewed with a quick and savage practicality.

Danarius caught him looking, and their eyes met, briefly, though the mirror’s reflection. Fenris looked away, and turned to hang his master’s dinner jacket up in the closet. He could feel his eyes as he performed his nightly chores – laying out his dressing gown, turning down his sheets, pouring his wine. He wondered idly if he would be sent to fetch his fleeing mistress. He wondered if her guards would allow it. The sharp divide that existed between Domina’s household and the slaves Danarius had brought with him had never, to his knowledge, been tested.

Fenris ignored the other slaves, caught waiting in the endless fire of Danarius’s ire. Flush with his victory at the theater, the magister had been almost jolly when he’d called for his wife’s services on returning home. His passions were stirred up by his success, his display of dominance and power over not only his colleagues, his rivals, and his friends – but over death herself.

“Get out,” Danarius ordered at last. His voice was steel and thunder all at once. Domina’s slaves jumped. They leapt into action, fleeing gracelessly for the door.

Danarius caught his arm as Fenris made to follow.

“You will attend me, my wolf.”

Fenris stopped, but he did not understand. His training had seen him prepared to meet most of his master’s needs – to be both bodyguard and manservant, to anticipate, to serve – but the messy, unfortunate services impressed on Domina every week had never once been a consideration.

Understanding dawned too slowly, and the shame of his failure to anticipate the need clashed with his shock at the expectation that he should now make himself available. He knew his master, and he saw it, clearly, in one terrible flash – _this_ was how Danarius salvaged his power, _this_ was how he soothed his humiliation. Domina had defied him, but Fenris, who had pulled a heart from a woman’s chest and crushed it in his palm, was powerless to do the same.

When he failed to move fast enough, Danarius grabbed his collar and he pushed him, and Fenris, horrified both by the prospect of what was coming as well as his own shameful hesitance to please him, stumbled, sluggish, reluctant to obey. Reality seemed to warp and bend. His thighs hit the bed. Danarius pushed him down. It took little effort for the magister to rip away what little clothing his pet had been allowed.

Danarius stretched him quickly, roughly, with attention only to his own personal comfort. The magister’s slicking spell had a thick, unpleasant feel to it, and a greasy, smoky stench that filled his head and choked him. It irritated his lyrium, which flickered fitfully until Danarius lit it with a cruel crash of magic. Fenris hid his face in the sheets and tried to keep quiet as he was mounted.

It didn’t take long. Three thrusts. Four. It was no time, and it was all of eternity, just the same. Danarius, grunting, sweating. His fingers dug into the flesh at his hips with bruising intensity.

When he was done, Danarius pulled out and away. Fenris heard him cross the room, heard the splashing of water as he cleaned himself up at the basin. Fenris remained where he was. He couldn’t stop shaking. He clung to the sheets and stared at nothing. He was aware, dimly, of pain.

Danarius picked up his glass of wine and drank. His gaze felt like the burn of branding irons. He said, “Report to the baths and have them clean you up. Then tell the kitchens to give you a treat.” He sounded pleased; he had gotten his victory back. Fenris felt a nauseating wave of shame and guilt that he didn’t feel proud of his service.

His legs didn’t want to hold him. His face felt tight and wet. He struggled to walk as normal, to keep his expression calm, the way his master liked it.

In the baths they washed him and oiled his skin. They massaged his shoulders, his back, and his legs. They didn’t talk to him. They never did.

“Dominus says no healing,” he heard someone say. They gave him a soft tunic and breeches, and sent him to the kitchens, where he was given an entire plate of dried salted sardines and a sour glass of wine. He ate it all, and tried to feel grateful. Mostly he felt nothing.

He threw up in the gardens on the way back to his rooms.

 


	7. Leto

At first, it was easy to hide.

Cuts and bruises could be covered up or explained away, and if he was careful about how he moved no one noticed that Leto was a bit stiff and sore. Though Gallus and the others didn’t approve of his attempts to train with them, neither were they going to stop him. Their reactions to seeing him day after day ranged from amusement to annoyance to indifference.

“At the very least, you’ll know which end of the spear to hold,” Gallus told him. “If you really mean to compete, don’t think anyone will take it easy on you. Even I would kill you, if I had to.”

“I’m flattered,” Leto told him.

He waited until the evening to visit them, and never risked going when he might be caught. He made sure to complete every task asked of him, and to behave as the model slave so a beating wouldn’t set back his training. Time was so short, and it set a tight, terrible knot in his throat to think about, so instead he only dug his heels in deeper. He could not allow himself to fail.

But bit by bit, it started to come out.

Somewhere, somehow, more slaves started to hear about the contest and, lured by the promise of a prize, they too started to visit the Ludus – enough of them that Leto became certain Danarius knew about it. Perhaps he wanted a wider pool to choose from, or enjoyed the growing spark of competition between his slaves. No one was punished for it.

Leto began eating more. He was ravenous all the time. He pushed his body to the limits, day after day, spurred on by the threat hanging over his head, time ticking down to the day his sister would be sold. One of the Breeding Houses had put in a bid for her, but they were full at the moment, and would not be able to accept her until next month. Danarius accepted their down payment with one hand, and called for a team of specialists to examine her. They took her away for three days, and when she returned, she jumped at shadows. Her eye was blackened, her face haunted. She didn’t touch the special meal their mother made to celebrate her return.

Leto saw the report the specialists sent on her. They were confident that she would be easy to get with child, and would easily bear several “litters of rabbits.” They said that though her magic was weak, they were certain with the right spells she would be able to produce many mages. They praised her good health and round hips and servile nature.

Danarius raised his asking price for her, and ordered another shipment of lyrium.

That was when Leto decided to tell his sister about the Games.

He couldn’t stand to see how carefully she walked, even within their home, her head down, her hands wringing knots in her hair. She had been taken off kitchen duties, and had nothing but time to herself – time to contemplate the future awaiting her – and Leto thought the knowledge that she may yet be spared would bring the smile back to her face. Hope was the greatest gift he could give her.

It was a bright afternoon, so hot that even indoors everyone felt sluggish and sweaty. Leto had been dismissed from the counting houses early, and had rushed home with the intent to go to the Ludus, until he saw Varania. He sat her down at the table, and made her some tea. Then, unable to stop his smile, he told her everything.

The silence that followed seemed to stretch for miles.

“No,” Varania told him, at last.

Leto only felt his grin grow. As she rose from her chair he moved forward, catching her about the waist and dancing her around the room. She felt light as a feather in his arms. “Don’t you see?” he laughed. “Everything is perfect!”

He didn’t understand why she did not smile. Varania said, “If something seems too good to be true…” and trailed off. She wouldn’t look at him.

Leto laughed again. He kissed her cheek, but she pushed him away when he tried to hug her.

“You cannot do this,” she told him firmly.

“You’re going to be _free_!” he said.

He was expecting her joy, perhaps even her gratitude, but his sister looked terrified as she groped for her chair and sank slowly down once again.

“Mother will never allow this,” she told him.

“Master already approved my candidacy,” he said. He wasn’t sure it was true, but it was true enough. Danarius had not stopped any of the slaves from visiting the Ludus for training, and the kitchens had been unusually forgiving about the extra food he was eating.

“Leto,” she said, “You’ve never been in a fight in your life! You’re not a warrior. They’ll be scraping your innards off the cobblestones!”

“Why are you upset?” he asked. “This is the answer we’ve been searing for. This is it! This is the way to save you!”

She shook her head, but would not meet his eyes. “Perhaps it would not be so bad,” she told him, and didn’t sound like she believed her own words. “Breeders – they get pampered, treated well. Mother said the food is actually quite good, and…”

“I’ll never allow it!” he spat with enough vehemence to draw his sister’s gaze. They stared at each other. Varania looked horrified.

When the door opened, it broke whatever spell lay between them. Their mother looked even more grey and careworn than usual.

The way she looked at Leto, she had already heard the news.

“Domina…” she said. “Domina wants you, Leto. Go to her quickly.”

Still, he stood frozen for a moment. Disappointment and confusion washed over him in waves. He had felt only triumph and determination until now, but they both looked at him as if he had done something terrible, as if he had broken their hearts and shattered them into pieces. As if they were already attending his funeral.

Leto frowned. He squared his shoulders, and he went for his scribe’s satchel. Even as he ached, their disapproval gnawing at him, he told himself he would succeed at any cost.

\--

Leto had not been summoned to his mistress’s side since Danarius had returned to Minrathous, and he found it odd that he should come upon her alone now. She sat at her vanity, dressed for a light afternoon tea, her hair swept up off the nape of her neck. She watched him through the reflection in her great gilded mirror as he entered the room, and she did not turn until he knelt appropriately, his head bowed, his hands still.

“You wish a letter penned, domina?” Leto asked, and his voice came out smooth and calm, despite everything else.

“No,” she said. “My husband has seen fit to put an end to my…correspondence.”

There was something there – a brief flash of something. Pain or guilt or fury – perhaps all three. Leto watched her carefully, without appearing to watch her. It was a habit he had picked up young.

She said, “You’re uncommonly bright for one of your kind, Leto. I’ve always had a fondness for you. You’ve always been one of my favorites. A mind like yours could almost pass for human.”

“Yes, domina,” he said. “My gratitude is yours.”

“Is your loyalty?” she asked.

He nearly lifted his head. “Domina?”

She was quiet for a long moment, then rose. She went to her window and drew back the curtains, watching the yard down below. She said, “My husband has created quite the fuss with these Games he has planned. Were you aware he opened it up to any slave who wishes to compete?”

“I – had guessed, domina.”

“You never were the kind to wait for permission,” she said. She let the curtains fall and turned back to him. “I should have had you beaten more often.”

“Yes, domina,” he said, and even to his ears it sounded cheeky. She laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“What do you think will happen to you?” she asked.

He hesitated, and cautiously lifted his head. When she didn’t reprimand him, he sat back on his heels.

“I’m going to win,” he told her.

She pursed her lips, displeased with his answer.

“Danarius thinks he has finally perfected his technique,” she said. “He’s been working on this farce since before we were wed. Do you have any idea how many valuable slaves he has _wasted_? How many times he nearly bankrupted our house?” she waved her hand when he opened his mouth, and so Leto did not try to answer. “Maker,” she said, “I can still hear the screams from the last time. When the Archon sent him to Seheron, I thought it was finally over. I thought…pour me a drink, Leto.”

He rose smoothly and went to Domina’s little cabinet. He had seen her favored drink prepared enough times that he thought he could replicate it, pouring from one bottle and the next until he had the right color. She sat on her couch when he brought it to her, and motioned for him to stand before her.

“You will be lucky to die in the contest,” she told him. “Should you win, you will meet a fate worse than death.”

“Would domina order me not to compete?” he asked.

She grimaced. “I lack the… _authority_ for such a thing.”

“I am glad.”

“Impertinent - !” she half rose out of her seat as if to strike him, then settled back again. She looked defeated. “Whatever it is you think you will gain by winning his prize, it won’t be worth it,” she said. “Not for what he will do to you.”

Leto thought of his sister, jumping at shadows. He thought of his mother, grey and worn before her time. He said, “Any price is worth it,” and Domina snarled.

She said, “Get out of my sight, then.”


	8. Varania

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another rough chapter. I'm sorry.

They were silent, after Leto left, and their tidy little home suddenly felt too close and too strange, unfriendly – their one sanctuary from their masters tainted by the looming shadow of horrors to come, haunted by the ghosts of things yet to pass.

Varania’s hands would not stop shaking. Sweat dampened her hair and slid slowly down her spine, and yet she may as well have been carved from ice, she felt so chilled. Her brother’s open, reckless smile taunted her. She couldn’t stop picturing him, dead and rotting. White gleam of skull, his light and his energy and his beauty gone forever – wasted on some foolish dream.

Wasted on _her_.

It seemed as if she watched from some great distance as their mother lowered herself into her rickety old rocker. She was like a stranger, thin and grey and frail, her eyes wet and glassy with unshed tears. Her lips trembled, and she lifted her thin coarse hands to touch her fingertips to them as if she did not know what they were. Varania, watching, felt that she could count every year, every hurt, and every heartbreak in the wrinkles that lined her mother’s skin.

“You cannot allow him to do this thing,” her mother said, and Varania bowed her head, and she did not answer.

Leto was the sun, and he was the rain. He was every good thing in their mother’s life. Varania’s father had been a household guard, who took his pleasure and went on with his life without a second glance. Leto’s father would have been her mother’s husband, had they been permitted to wed. Had he not escaped, vanished in the middle of the night without a word.

Mother had loved Leto’s father. For years she waited for him to return to them. When she looked at her youngest child, she saw happier times, and Varania could not resent him for that.

Leto was impossible not to love.

Leto was kind and Leto was gentle – in a world where neither kindness nor gentleness should exist. Leto was clever and he was quick. He was funny. He smiled like he did not know he was a slave, and he made her feel strong when she was weak.

Varania closed her eyes, and she saw her brother’s head decorating a gladiator’s spear. He was still smiling.

She left without a word.

Mother had already told Varania everything there was to know about life in the breeding pens. She had spoken frankly, and spared no detail.

“You must behave yourself,” she’d said, as Varania sat at her feet. Her mother had pulled her wide wooden brush through Varania’s hair, the motion so smooth and familiar and soothing that Varania hadn’t considered the horror of her fate until much later. “You must be quiet and obliging and grateful. You don’t want them to decide you need breaking.”

Varania was lucky, her mother had said, pulling soothing fingers along her scalp. She braided Varania’s hair like she braided Domina’s, with fanciful twists and loops. “You’re pretty, and you’ll breed mages. They’ll pair you with other mages – educated, with clean fingernails. They’ll give you medicines, if you want them – things to make the world seem like a dream. You won’t have to worry about being passed around by common soldiers and dirty laborers.”

She might not even have to share her room with many other girls, her mother told her, practical, matter-of-fact. All she would have to do was lie there, and the men would come to her. Many would be gentle – and once she was with child, she would have nine months of leisure to look forward to. Nine months of soft pillows and special treats, and if she was really good the mages would make sure there was no pain when the baby came.

Varania’s stomach turned. She stopped in the middle of the corridor just outside the kitchens, suddenly breathless with horror. The world seemed to swim. She made a noise like a sob, and pressed her forehead to the cool marble of a nearby pillar.

_“You’re going to be free!”_

Leto had sounded as if he believed himself. Varania tried to be realistic and practical, like her mother. She hadn’t thought about freedom since she was a child, capable of only childish thoughts.

To Varania, freedom had been lounging on soft couches eating fancy bonbons. It had been riding swift ponies and dressing up in the kinds of gowns Domina wore. Freedom was soft, fragrant hands that didn’t crack and ache from washing dishes.

Varania stopped dreaming about freedom a long time ago. She knew it would be nothing like she dreamed. Freedom would be an empty belly and a filthy alienage. Freedom would be coupling with whoever she thought could protect her the best, working like a dog, and still scrambling for rent. She should be grateful those weren’t concerns.

Even still, freedom taunted her. It beckoned, gleaming, golden, and a part of her mind that remembered what it was to hope couldn’t help but to point out that if anyone could succeed, it was Leto. If anyone could save her from the breeding pens and give her charge of her own life, it was unstoppable, indomitable Leto.

“If you don’t have some place to be, I suggest you find one, rabbit!”

The tail of a whip licked at her thighs, stinging even through the fabric of her skirts. The soldier was one of Danarius’s, and he leered in a way that caught her heart in her throat. Varania fled into the kitchens, dodging cooks with bubbling pots, who frowned and asked what she was doing there when it wasn’t her shift.

She took sanctuary in one of the pantries, throwing herself atop a bag of potatoes to weep.

She thought of the breeding house – of the lines of men with their clean fingernails and their angry swollen cocks.

She thought of Leto’s bright eyes, dimmed and milky with death’s hateful glaze.

She thought of having every babe she should ever bear torn from her breast and sold like cattle on auction.

She thought of the flies that would swarm Leto’s smiling mouth when they threw his body onto the pyre.

\--

The gladiators sent Leto sprawling in the dust of the fighting pit, and laughed when he was slow to pick himself up. They kicked at his ribs and stepped on his fingers, and they made lewd jokes about what they would do with his corpse when he fell in the games.

Leto laughed with them. He picked himself up and he tried again. The results were always the same.

Varania’s stomach churned.

She had never been out to the Ludus before, and the smell of leather and sweat made her head spin. Their master had not forbidden anyone, no matter how unqualified, from attempting to compete, yet even still it felt illicit, her starlit dash across the grounds, the grass soft and wet against her bare feet. The statues outside had frightened her, so large and monstrous. It was wrong, her being here, so far from where she belonged.

The clash of blades seemed deafening. Steel on steel and flesh on flesh. It was overwhelming, hot and hellish violence punctuated by grunts and groans and cries of pain.

The next time he picked himself up, there was blood on Leto’s face.

A touch on Varania’s shoulder made her jump, shriek in guilt or in fear or some combination of the two. Gallus laughed.

“Easy little mouse,” he said. “You’re a long way from where you belong. Come to cheer your idiot brother, have you?”

She tried to answer, but her heart was in her throat, cutting off anything that resembled words. She managed only to shake her head, and Gallus frowned in response.

“Don’t tell me _you’re_ thinking of picking up a blade,” he said. “This game isn’t meant to be a joke.”

“No!” she managed, the word pulled from her, violent as the splash of blood that painted her brother’s face. Gallus lifted his brows and she wrung her hands and looked back to the ring, nervous that Leto might have noticed her. He hadn’t; he was on the ground again. “Gallus,” she cried, swinging back to the other elf, reaching out to grasp his hand in her own. “You can’t let him compete!”


	9. Leto

He was slower to rise this time, picking himself up off the ground with movements slow and aching. He had to pause to rest on his hands and knees, and some of the fighters cheered and offered up lewd suggestions about what to do with him in such a tempting position. His blood dripped slowly, darkly, onto the hard dirt of the ring.

Gallus was pacing, agitated. He kicked at him when he was slow to recover, and Leto grunted, his ribs already an aching mass.

“Not so fun today, is it? Not so fun today!” Gallus spat, and paced away, toward the weapons rack. The other fighters grew silent – slowly at first, then all at once – as he replaced his blunted practice sword with a sharpened one.

“Gallus,” Leto croaked. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve lost patience with your game, my friend,” Gallus told him. “You see now, how it is – to face me when I’m serious? If you can’t handle me alone, here and now, how do you think it will be at the games – with the crowds shouting and fifty other slaves after your pretty neck?”

Leto slowly managed to regain his feet. He said, “I won’t lose.”

Gallus rushed him, but did not strike. He stopped himself short, glaring down at the smaller elf. He had been strange all day – short, impatient, his smiling, laughing nature completely replaced by something silent and boiling. He seemed to have worked himself into a rage. He was breathing heavily, nostrils flaring, as he stared down at Leto. Leto could feel his strength, his power, his size. He could feel the threat of him, the knowledge of the gap in their abilities.

Leto lifted his chin and met his friend’s eye. He said, “I won’t lose.”

The day’s practice had started normally enough. The others had grown used to Leto’s presence among them, and even after more slaves began to sneak down to the Ludus to try their hands at a blade or a bow, their teasing affection for him remained. While the other household slaves were looked on as unwanted interlopers, Leto had some kind of a place among the gladiators, even if it was purely one created out of boneheaded stubbornness. Some of them had even begun actively trying to teach him.

When he arrived that afternoon, he had paired off with Fabia, who was closest to him in size and had a few things to say about not letting that size become a disadvantage. They’d been working together for several hours, in fact, before Gallus, stone-faced and serious, had pulled him away and thrust a practice sword at his chest.

Gallus continued to glare down at him, and Leto did not finch. He met his friend gaze for gaze, and refused to let himself feel intimidated by the other elf’s greater size and strength.

“If you’re so eager to die,” Gallus said, softly, “Then why shouldn’t I just kill you now and be done with it?”

“Do you think I would make it easy?” Leto asked.

“A contest, then?” the voice that rang out, suddenly, had the two springing apart in an instant, each putting several feet between himself and the other. Leto watched Danarius make his way from the observation platform, followed by a trail of slaves. He found his knees did not want to bend, and his hand was reluctant to drop his practice blade. He only just managed to force himself to bow his head.

He heard murmurs of surprise all around him; none of them had been aware they were being watched, and certainly not by their master. Leto had not been summoned to his presence in some time, and had almost forgotten the cold, calculating feel of those eyes on him, his entire fate and future in one man’s hands. Out of breath and hurting from the beating Gallus had already given him, he even still felt a dangerous blend of anger and defiance bubbling up within him.

Danarius did not call for his gladiators to form their line, and so no one moved. The silence of the Ludus seemed deafening, broken only by the sound of their master’s slippers, the whisk of his robes. The other house slaves fell to their knees without prompting, but Leto remained standing with the fighters. His slender chest heaved with every painful breath as Danarius stepped out into the ring.

Leto could feel his gaze, the way it travelled over him. He felt as if he could hear his cold, serpentine smile as it uncoiled across his angular face. He rolled his eyes upwards to watch him through the hedge of his lashes, careful not to get caught, as Danarius thoughtfully tapped his thin fingers against his lips.

“What an odd place to find my wife’s clever little scribe,” Danarius said, and it took all of Leto’s power to bite back on an answer. “Out of place here, aren’t you?”

At some signal he didn’t catch, a slave boy rushed up with a folding chair. Danarius sat with a flourish of his robe, and when the boy knelt without prompting before him, used his back as a footstool. Danarius remained silent for a moment longer, but Leto recognized it for what it was – a trap. Though he had voiced a question, Leto was not meant to answer. He would not speak out of turn. He would not give the damned man an excuse. A punishment now could put an end to his only chance to free Varania and his mother, and though no one had been forbidden from coming out here, it certainly seemed within reason that Danarius, for the sheer pleasure of it, might decide the presence of Leto and the other house slaves warranted some form of retribution.

“Taking time away from your duties – taking my gladiators away from their training,” the magister mused, as if he could read his mind. Leto was eternally grateful that he could not. “I should be reassured this is not a waste. Let’s have a contest, then. Something to whet the appetite before the real Games, mn? My, but that does sound entertaining, doesn’t it?”

Leto flinched and didn’t answer. His heart was pounding in his chest. The air felt heavy, like a woolen blanket thrown over the lot of them. He hadn’t noticed the heat before, but it seemed to choke him now. Sweat trailed, slow and thick, down his back. He had taken off his tunic some hours ago, and he felt naked, exposed now.

“Answer me,” Danarius snapped.

“Yes, _dominus_ ,” Gallus said. Leto could hear the reluctance, the bitter twist in his voice.

“Yes, _dominus_ ,” Leto echoed, a little less quickly.

Danarius nodded. He said, “Let’s not hold back, then. Real weapons, please.”

Leto swallowed. It felt as if he was watching himself from far away as he returned to the weapons rack for something more appropriate. His legs were still shaky from earlier. As he returned, he found that Gallus had gone pale. They took their stances.

Danarius said, “Begin.”

Leto moved. He didn’t know how long their master had been watching them that day, or if he had come to watch at any other time. He felt foolish thinking that the man was unaware of their actions out in the Ludus. It had seemed a safe spot, ironically enough, untainted by the watchful eyes of those who held their leashes.

Even still, he had no illusions that the man would not know, should he fail to give his all.

Gallus was slow to lift his blade, and Leto drew blood on the first swing, though at the last moment he was redirected from Gallus’s shoulder to his forearm. He darted away as quickly as he could manage – which at the moment was _not very_ \- out of his friend’s reach, but he needn’t have bothered; the counterattack never came. Gallus’s blood stood out, stark and red against his forearm. They stared at each other.

Leto gathered his strength and darted in again, and Gallus was better at deflecting this time, but once again did not attack initially. When he did swing at him, it was slow, halfhearted. Even still, Leto’s day and the earlier beating had taken a toll on his reflexes, and he felt the shallow cut of the blade against his ribs.

“Weren’t you just threatening to kill the lad?” Danarius demanded. “Kill him, then.”

Their blades crashed again. Leto managed to deflect this time, but he knew he shouldn’t have. Gallus was moving too slowly, telegraphing his movements. He wasn’t using half the strength Leto knew he possessed.

“Do you not understand an order when it’s given to you?” Danarius’s voice was sharp, displeased. “Kill him!” he said again.

Leto’s lungs were burning. His entire body ached. He knew how easy it would be under normal circumstances for Gallus to destroy him, much less when he was tired, and sloppy, and his heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that it was almost deafening. He circled him slowly, just out of range, sword up defensively, as he had been taught. It was heavy. His legs felt wobbly and he tried to shake off a way of dizziness. He couldn’t lose. He had to live, to fight in the games. He had to fight, for Varania.

Leto threw himself at Gallus, and Gallus pushed him back. Leto stumbled and fell. He lost his sword and scrambled, desperately for it. His legs faltered when he tried to pick himself back up.

“What are you waiting for?” Danarius demanded.

Gallus looked at Leto.

And he dropped his sword.

“ _Dominus_ ,” Gallus began. Annoyed and almost bored, the magister gave a contemptuous sneer and made a careless gesture. Gallus shrieked as the magic hit him. Danarius didn’t even watch. He rose with a sharp, impatient movement, and began making his way from the ring.

“Have the gladiator beaten, then sell him,” Leto heard him say as he passed. “He doesn’t deserve to die in my games.”

“And the household slaves?” his steward asked, glancing at Leo, where he remained, gasping for air on the ground.

Danarius didn’t even look back. “Leave them,” he said. “We can use the leftovers for sacrifices.”

Gallus was still screaming as they hauled him away.

 


	10. Fenris

The elf called Fenris could feel his flesh baking under the harsh rays of the sun. The oil that adorned his skin seemed to sizzle and pop, as if he were a turkey being slowly turned over a flame. He had a new collar, thick and heavy and encrusted with gems, with arm cuffs to match. A sapphire had been pressed into his navel, secured with some kind of thick paste. Thin gold chains encircled his chest and his belly. His leash, thick braided gold, was connected to one of those chains, rather than his collar, and it kept reflecting the sun into his eyes. He had been allowed pants, but they were painfully tight, and clung to every inch of him so as to leave absolutely nothing imagined.

He lifted his master’s umbrella higher, shielding the man beneath its wide shade, and let his eyes move over the gathering. He would not allow his discomfort to distract him from his task. Danarius was still pleased with him, riding the high of his victory at the theater last week, and it was the duty of the elf called Fenris to prove himself worthy of such a great man’s pride. His master’s need of him, and his attentions, were an honor he had yet to really earn.

He would not disappoint. He would continue to see his master pleased.

Magistrix Septima was throwing this fete for her favorite niece’s entrance into society. Three days of picnics, performances, gladiatorial contests, and balls were to mark the event. Already nobles dotted the lawn like spring flowers in their over-the-top couture, slaves at their heels waiting to see to their every whim. Most used spells to keep themselves cool, but Danarius liked the image it presented to have Fenris at his side, waiting on him alone. It made a marked difference from the other magisters and their small armies of servants. Fenris was any and everything his master needed him to be.

As Fenris let his eyes scan the nobles, so too did their eyes seek him out. Their expressions were hungry, envious, admiring. He lifted his chin, and tried to feel proud. He made an impression, and Septima’s carefully chosen retinue of pretty slaves, moving among their betters clad only in jewelry and skin, seemed to fail to attract even half the attention he did. Their tight young bodies had been dusted with gold, and they glimmered in the sun as they offered up for the guests anything that a person could possibly want.

At the end of the day, these slaves were mere party favors. Fenris, on the other hand, was not to be shared. He was the unobtainable, there to taunt them, to tempt them, to frustrate and amuse. His purpose, aside from the service of his master, was to generate envy in all who saw him.

He was succeeding.

Danarius took a treat from a tray, and pressed it between his pet’s lips. His hand lingered, stroking his cheek as he might a loyal dog, and Fenris felt relief to see the man so pleased with him. It was a mark of honor to be doted on in public.

“Ah, Septima,” Danarius greeted, turning his attention from Fenris to their host as she drew near. She was trailed by her favorite guard, the golden haired elf, who was once again dressed as a gladiator. Like the party favors, the bodyguard’s skin was dusted with gold, and from up close Fenris could see the false lashes that had been affixed to his eyes. Each time he blinked, they brushed his cheeks like butterflies. His cheeky smile spoiled the pride Fenris had found his moment with Danarius. He met the other elf’s gaze flatly, with annoyed disapproval, as Septima and Danarius greeted one another with dignified air kisses. “Charming party. You always have had a way with these things,” Danarius said.

“I don’t see your lovely wife in attendance,” Septima said with a crease of a frown. The smile Danarius gave was neither friendly nor pleased.

“She had a prior engagement, I’m afraid. She should be along later tonight.”

“I do hope everything is well.”

His smile grew. He said, “It will be.”

She reached for his arm and folded it along her own. “Since your wife is absent, I shall have to pay special attention to you. See? Now you have a jewel on each side.”

“The elf is little more than a trinket, my dear,” he said. He snapped his fingers at Fenris, and did not glance his way when he said, “Keep up, my wolf,” and Fenris felt the burn of shame that his master should think such an order even necessary to voice.

He followed as they began to walk – behind and to the side of his master, his arm extended with the umbrella to keeping the man shaded while sweat itched between the thin gold chains that crisscrossed his back. Septima’s guard walked on the other side, and kept trying to catch his eye. Fenris ignored him. The guests they passed rolled their gazes over him appreciatively, and he ignored them, too.

“Your niece is pleased, I hope?” Danarius asked, and Septima laughed.

“More pleased than her mother, at any rate,” she said, and they laughed.

Beside him, the gladiator made a sound. When their masters continued to laugh and gossip, he made it again, trying to get his attention. Fenris could feel his eyes – not on his body, like so many others, but on his face. From his peripherals he could see the other elf’s broad smile.

“ _Hey_!” the gladiator hissed, when he didn’t answer.

Danarius and Septima stopped.

Fenris felt a moment of fear, as his master looked back at him. He kept his expression neutral, his eyes carefully averted. He tried, with every inch of himself, to silently convey his distaste for the other elf, his aversion to the fellow’s attempts to engage him.

Danarius’s gaze was thoughtful. As he turned back to Septima, he nodded toward one of the fighting rings that had been erected. Currently two Qunari women were within it, bare breasted and armed with short knives. They were both bleeding from multiple cuts across their bodies. Fenris could see by the way their chests heaved that there wouldn’t be much longer to the match, and indeed, within moments the smaller of the two decided to take a risk. She darted in, knife flashing. The larger grabbed her by the hair.

“Do you like them?” Septima asked, stroking her fingertips along the back of Danarius’s hand. “Caught on the frontlines. Terribly stubborn beasts.”

“Even the strongest beast can be broken,” Danarius murmured. He sounded amused, but Fenris was not reassured. His master was displeased with him, because of the gladiator. Fenris hadn’t done anything, but he had still managed to displease the man.

The sound was thunderous as the larger Qunari broke the smaller’s neck with her bare hands.

Fenris was so distressed with the thought of disappointing Danarius, that he didn’t hear what it was that his master murmured to Septima, only that she laughed, and quickly agreed in response. As the handlers came forward to drag the Qunari – one still and lifeless, the other snarling and struggling – from the ring, Septima turned to the closest onlookers.

A spell must have amplified her voice. “Friends,” she said, “Our darling Danarius has offered us a treat – an exhibition! His lyrium warrior, versus my gallant gladiator!”

There was applause. Guests who had not been paying attention to the fighting rings drifted closer. Danarius detached the leash from the chains around Fenris’s belly.

There was ice in his voice when he said, “Kill him.”

“Yes, _Dominus_ ,” Fenris answered.

The gladiator was not smiling now. He was frowning as they took their places in the fighting ring, his golden brows drawn down in concern. Fenris appreciated the feel of the sand against his feet.

An audience had gathered, and they laughed when Danarius sent one of the slaves down with the umbrella for Fenris to use as a weapon. The gladiator was armed with two short swords, which he drew slowly, his shoulders heavy.

Fenris understood his master’s message. An unexpected breeze stirred his hair, and he let his head fall back, eyes closing as he appreciated the moment of relief.

“Begin!” Septima ordered, and the gladiator hesitated before he charged.

He was so slow, swinging his short swords together toward Fenris’s head. The elf ducked past him with ease, and swung the umbrella, and the gladiator stumbled as he struck him across the back. Fenris walked away from him easily as the audience laughed. He chanced a glance up at Danarius, and found his master’s expression pleased.

Fenris kept his back to his opponent, but he heard him coming, his footsteps heavy in the sand. Just as he swung again, Fenris moved. To the side, back, turn. He was behind the gladiator before the blond had finished his swing, and the umbrella cracked loudly against the fellow’s skull. He stumbled again, and the audience roared their approval. Fenris walked away once more. Once more he looked up to his master.

Danarius smiled. He inclined his head.

Fenris tossed the umbrella aside. This time when the gladiator charged him, he stepped toward him. His lyrium flickered, brightly, to life.

The gladiator’s eyes were large and confused. Stupid. They dropped to the heart held in Fenris’s hand, and his brows drew down in concern. His swords made a soft sound as they fell into the sand. His body followed a moment later.

When Fenris rejoined his master, the man had already turned his attention from the ring, and back to conversation with Septima, who seemed none too concerned with the death of her favorite bodyguard. Danarius barely glanced at him at all, but Fenris accepted the treat pressed to his lips with gratitude. He was proud when his leash once more clicked into place. Danarius stroked his hair, absently, as if the wolf at his side was nothing but a pampered lapdog.


	11. Leto

On the day Leto was to turn himself in for the Games, his sister refused to speak to him, and his mother turned her cheek away when he went to kiss her goodbye. He dressed himself in loose, comfortable clothes, and closed the door to his family’s quarters completely certain he would never see it again.

He would not miss it.

The slaves had been told to report early. The sun had not risen and the grass was cool and wet on his bare feet as Leto crossed the yard to the Ludus. By the light of the moon spilling across the lawn Leto could see that the line already stretched out the doors. The allure of the Games’ prize outweighed the danger for more than just him.

Pink touched the horizon by the time Leto got inside. The ring had been partitioned off into sections, separated by wooden screens like rooms. They were processed in groups of five. On the very dirt of the ring on which Leto had trained, a trio of scribes took down the names of the slaves who wished to compete. They also wrote down their ages, heights, and weight. Then they were shuffled to the next room and made to strip.

In his position in the household, Leto had rarely been subjected to such a thing. He balked, initially, and so his clothes were taken by force, ripped from his body before he was made to bend with his hands on a long table with the other four in his group. Unexpected, tears stung his eyes as healers examined them for illness. Somewhere down the line, someone was shouting, protesting their treatment. Leto heard flesh strike flesh, and then nothing more. He swallowed down his emotions.

In the next area, their handlers threw buckets of icy water over them and scrubbed them down with rough sponges and strong soap that burned the inside of Leto’s nose. The handlers were just as rough drying them when the cleaning was over; the process was practiced and without feeling, and Leto was pink and raw by the time they were told to move on so the next group could begin. Nude, they were shuffled along, and their hair was cropped and their measurements taken. Those with body hair were shaved, and then they were all oiled. Household slaves he had known all his life rubbed the greasy, strong smelling stuff into his skin without looking at him, their eyes flat and dead and devoid of recognition. A spell.

Leto’s stomach felt sour and sick with disgust as he was shuffled into another line, still nude. The guards made jokes about their bodies. Some of the soon-to-be combatants did too. It was easy to tell the gladiators from the house slaves – not merely for their size and muscles, but their attitudes too. Leto squared his shoulders and refused to cower. He tried to forget how shamed and invaded he felt.

They were loaded onto carts and teams of horses drove them to the looming spectre of Minrathous’s coliseum. The city Leto knew so well seemed alien and strange. The gladiators in his group laughed and posed and waved, but most of the other slaves merely cowered. Passerby stared, and leered, and threw things at them. A half rotten head of cabbage hit Leto in the temple. He heard a child laugh.

At the coliseum they were met by a set a priests – heavyset eunuchs with cold eyes and wrinkled hands. They examined them, and spoke with soft voices. Two were pulled out of Leto’s group and shuffled in another direction before they were lined up, and the priests splattered their naked bodies with a mixture of blood and ash and more oil, then blessed them, as if for sacrifice. After, they led to long tables, where they sat, nude, and ate runny breakfast porridge and coffee, and they were not allowed to speak. Leto had no appetite, but he forced himself to swallow each bite. His spoon scraped the bowl. Only the gladiators looked unbothered by the treatment they received. Leto tried to emulate them. He missed Gallus.

They were made to wear thick leather collars, each branded with a different number, and then they were put into holding pens underneath the coliseum, packed in tightly like livestock awaiting slaughter.

As the sun climbed over Tevinter, so too did the heat. It was past noon, and Leto was packed in tight with the other slaves, the press of their bodies too close and warm. The oil on their flesh had soured and begun to stink, and the heat filled Leto’s head and made his vision swim. Someone pissed on his feet. Desperate, Leto squeezed and shoved and forced his way to the outer wall of the pens, where he could fit his face through the bars and gulp a few choking gasps of fresh air. He prayed for a breeze.

Here, Leto could see other pens, each equally cramped as his own, and he wondered if slaves from other households had been allowed to compete as well. Faces swam before him, and he couldn’t think clear enough to recognize anyone. Above, Leto could hear the trample of many feet as people began to arrive to watch the first day of the games – nobility and commoners alike. They would sit on rows of seats that rose high up into the air, surrounding the dirt on which Leto would fight and kill and earn his family’s freedom. The elite of Minrathous, with their slaves and their spells, would snack on delicacies and make bets and political plays, shielded from the sun and the heat by spells and umbrellas and awnings. The commoners would sit sweating in the sun, and eat things brought from home, and get drunk on cheap wine.

Slaves herded a dozen pairs of oxen painted with gold onto a platform, and Leto listened to the crowd above cheer as it lifted. When they were sacrificed, the blood dripped down on the slaves in their pens from grates in the ceiling. A magically amplified voice welcomed the guests to the first day of the Games and thanked Danarius for planning and funding such an event – the words were clear at first, and then became strangely muffled. Leto realized something had been done to the ring to alter the playing field.

Someone in one of the other pens begged to be released. He swore he changed his mind. The guards only laughed. The man sobbed as, with a lurch, the platform holding his pen began to rise. So did two others.

Leto waited to hear the fighting begin. He waited for the bloodlust of the crowd. Whatever had been done up there dampened all noise, and so he could only wait, helpless. His heart was hammering and his hands were shaking. Time did not seem to exist. Leto tried not to think about what waited up above. He thought about his sister and his mother. He tried to think about his breathing, to emulate the gladiators who stood so confident in their pens. His limbs felt stiff and weak. His lips were salty from sweat.

And then his platform shuttered, and began to lift.


	12. Leto

The sudden flare of sunlight was bright, blinding. Leto staggered, disoriented, and were it not for the bars that remained in their place around the holding cell, he surely would have lost his balance and been sent tumbling over the platform’s side in those first few dizzying moments. He couldn’t help but to reflect, without amusement, that the process seemed almost like a birth – emerging in terror and confusion from the dark damp depths of the holding area and into the noise and the light and the confusion of another world. Bathed in blood, today Leto would kill. The person he had been prior to this would never exist again.

It had to be worth it.

As they hit daylight, most of the other slaves cringed. They shrank back, tried to hide their eyes. Some tried to hide their nudity from the crowd. The gladiators among them pushed their way to the bars to wave and flex. The crowd liked that, but Leto didn’t think to attempt to emulate them this time.

His vision was swimming, blurred by the sudden brightness, but adrenaline made his mind sharp, and so he struggled against his discomfort, fought to see as much as he could of the world that awaited him, to form his plan now, before action became his only choice. His impression of the fighting ring came in quick, sundrenched patches. Light reflecting off water – the voice of the announcer – boats.

They had flooded the arena. Leto had heard of such a thing, but never seen it for himself. Five platforms floated along the water’s surface, scattered about like a child’s playthings. Two bore weapons racks, two armor. One held an enchanted item that popped and sizzled with electricity.

There was more. Two small boats bobbed gently on the surface, dreadnaughts in miniature, perfect to the smallest detail. Each held a mage dressed, clownishly, as Saarebas. The horns that adorned their heads had very likely been ripped from real Qunari.

The slaves’ objective seemed, simply, to cross the arena. On the opposite side from the place they emerged a final platform waited. It held five pedestals, ready for the five from this group who would make it to the next round of the Games. Patches of water were brown from the blood of those who had come before. Some of the platforms were slick with it.

Leto took a breath. From somewhere to the right, a horn blew. The bars began to lower, sinking with a great grinding noise into the platform.

Leto hadn’t swum since he was a child, but he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about whether he remembered how. Someone behind him surged forward, and he lost his balance and was knocked into the water. It was shockingly cold, and dark, and as it closed around his head he felt just a moment of panic.

He came up gasping for air, treading water like a drowning dog. The world was still too bright and too loud.

The slaves who hadn’t jumped or been pushed into the water by their fellows were being motivated now. Leto pushed wet hair from his face and felt the explosion of heat as the mages on the boats began to pelt the platform with great orange bursts of flame. Their aim was a little too good; the bloodcurdling shrieks of one of the kitchen girls as she was incinerated had the crowd roaring with laughter. The mages used wind spells to blow away the smoke and reek of burning flesh so that the audience would not find its enjoyment compromised. Even still, Leto’s eyes were burning.

In a place like Minrathous, with its proximity to and dependence on the sea, it was neither uncommon nor forbidden for a slave to learn how to swim. There were a few who flailed, gasping and desperate, who clung to the nearest body and brought them sinking down with them, but it was less than a quarter of their number. The crowd jeered at those who struggled. They threw eggs and rotting produce. Leto struggled against the shock of the cold water to kick his brain back into thought. He needed to move.

The quickest way to the end would be to ignore the other platforms and swim directly to it – and with a start Leto realized a few of his competitors were nearly halfway there – but once he got there there would be competition for the pedestals, and without weapons or armor Leto knew he wouldn’t stand a chance at physical combat.

Something brushed his foot. Leto looked down, expecting to see another slave – a hand, perhaps, extending, reaching, ready to pull him down, into the darkness and the cold.

Instead what he saw was a long, dark shape, cutting smoothly through the water below. Ten – no – twelve feet long.

Leto began to swim.

He heard the screams, somewhere behind him. Someone he knew, someone he had grown up with – a member of the slave community he had literally seen every day. Leto could smell the blood. He could feel the audience’s mounting excitement. He took a breath, kicked his feet, reached with his arms. Whenever he broke the water’s surface for breath, he heard the cheers of the crowd and the rising panic of the slaves who had lingered by the platform. He didn’t look back.

Leto reached the first weapons platform, hooking his elbows on the edge, hauling himself up onto the surface. He rolled onto his back and lay there a moment, breathing, chest heaving. The clouds that floated so high above in the bright blue of the sky looked so soft, and frail, and peaceful.

A mace came swinging down toward his head.

This time Leto didn’t think. He rolled, felt the whoosh of air as it missed his skull, the pull and pain as it caught his hair, ripping it from his scalp as he moved.

Slipping on blood leftover from some previous group, Leto scrambled to his feet. Durit, who had occasionally trained with him, who had laughed and teased and taunted him, laughed and straightened, bringing the maul up to his shoulders. He stretched. The Game excited him; he was half hard.

“Well you’ve survived longer than I expected, rabbit,” he said.

Leto backed away, slowly, watching the other man’s eyes watch him as he moved toward the weapons rack. Durit laughed again and swung, and Leto leapt back to avoid it. His back hit the rack with a clatter, and he reached, blindly, for whatever came to hand first. Durit raised the mace again.

Leto’s hands caught on a handle. He ducked and rolled, felt the air of the swing, heard the clatter of the weapons as the mace crashed into the rack and sent it tumbling over the edge into the water.

Leto had come away with only a short spear – wooden shaft, dull rusted head. He and the gladiator circled each other, eyes not leaving each other’s faces. Durit stepped in, and swung. Leto darted away, and jabbed at his side. He wasn’t sure if he was brave enough to break skin until he did it, using his added reach, the spearhead slipping in between Durit’s ribs, then catching there. He couldn’t pull it out.

Durit made a pained noise, then spat on him. “Are you trying to tickle me?” he demanded. He grabbed the heft of the spear and broke it, yanking Leto to him and swinging again. Leto relinquished his weapon and tried to dodge, but the mace clipped Leto’s shoulder and he fell. The pain was blunt, jarring. The gladiator lifted his weapon again.

And two horns sounded.

They both looked – they couldn’t help but to look. The first three slaves had reached the final platform, and while one lay dead, his face a pulpy mass of pink mangled flesh and broken white bone, the other two had reached the pedestals. The horns announced their arrival – and the spells that swept down to cover them, magical fields that kept them safe from further harm. One had a gash across his face, most of his nose missing. They were breathing heavily, but when they realized what had happened smiles found their faces.

They had made it.

For just a moment, no one moved. They stood locked where they had been, in the water or on platforms. Two slaves from the stables were fighting over a helmet when one abruptly dropped his end of it and dove back into the water.

Once someone reached a pedestal they were protected, guaranteed to reach the next round. All someone needed to do was reach it first.

And there were only three pedestals left.

Durit chuckled and tossed his mace away. He posed for the crowd, preening and flexing his muscles, and then he dove. His body cut smoothly into the water with no sign he even noticed the half of a spear still sticking in his ribs.

Leto tried not to think about the dark shape that had moved beneath him in the water. He tried not to think about jaws and teeth and rending flesh. His shoulder was agonizing to move and he didn’t know how capable he would be of swimming now, much less fighting. The only weapon he had left was a length of broken off spear that was little more than a stick.

But he couldn’t afford to fail.

He only half knew what he was doing. He backed away from the edge and took a running jump back into the water. He tried to keep the arm with the injured shoulder tucked close against his chest, to use the other to swim – not toward the final platform, but the one that held the magical artifact, which at the moment was just a bit closer for him.

Leto could barely keep his head above the water, swimming this way. He swallowed mouthfuls of it, salty and terrible and tainted with the blood of people he had once cared about. He heard fighting on the final platform. He heard the sizzle of magic, as the mages on the boats taunted those still in the water with spells that caused high waves and rolling waters. He heard the crowd’s growing excitement and he felt, rather than saw, the presence of something large near him.

He looked down, and all he saw were teeth.

Leto twisted in the water. It seemed everything was moving too slow, the approach of the creature, the wide yawning of its hungry mouth. The pain in his shoulder when he accidentally moved it was white hot, blinding. He jabbed his broken spear down into the utter blackness of the monster’s eye, and when the shark twisted back, away, he swam.

Leto didn’t know how he made it up onto the platform. The world was spinning, the pain in his shoulder nauseating. He could hardly stand, and so he crawled, dragging himself to the magical artifact, grabbing it desperately.

Panting, hardly aware, he leaned heavily on the table that had held the spell and he watched electricity arc from one person to another in the water. He watched slaves whose faces he would later remember as they grew stiff with shock. The smell on the air was electric, burning, foul. The crowd was deafening.

There was only one pedestal left.

For a moment Leto didn’t think he could move. He wasn’t sure he was really aware he was moving, pushing himself to the edge of the platform, taking a breath. The water closed over him again.

He could see sharks circling below – not dead then, but perhaps slowed. Bodies and parts of bodies. He was too aware of everything and nothing. His lungs burned.

He hauled himself up on the final platform with no idea how he had gotten there. A knife lay abandoned near the edge, and he picked it up. A serving girl – one of Domina’s hair attendants – had gotten there before him, and was nearly to the final pedestal. Her eyes were clear and blue and full of shock when he dragged the knife across her throat. Later, he would be unable to get those eyes out of his head. _He knew her_. For now all he saw was the pedestal. He took a slow, heavy step.

A net caught over his face, hauled him back and to the ground. He landed on his bad shoulder. He was still trying to free himself when Fabia, another of the gladiators, jabbed toward him with a trident. It pierced his thigh. As Leto howled in pain, she twisted the net, managed to free it from him, and cast it again. She began to drag him back to the edge.

Leto was in agony, and exhausted, and past the point of planning and thought. That moment of _action_ he had worried about before, unsure as to what he could do. He twisted in the net, struggling to cut himself free with the knife, managing, somehow, tackling Fabia. They got tangled together in it, went back over the edge into the water.

She pulled his hair, jabbed her thumb into the wound on his thigh. He opened his mouth to scream and instead got a throat full of saltwater. His blood was in the water, and his thrashing was drawing the attention of the sharks, now recovered from their shock. They circled below, interested, curious. Leto’s lungs burned. He lashed blindly with his knife, and when it became stuck in something, he relinquished it. He kicked desperately with his legs.

And then he was free.

Leto broke the surface again, gasping for air. When he hauled himself back onto the platform, he stopped to stare, numb, uncomprehending, at the red froth that stained the water, the tails that kicked up what had been a placid surface when they started.

He shook himself. He moved to the final pedestal, and claimed his place.

 

**Author's Note:**

> kaerwrites.tumblr.com


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